Julie's New Friend

Julie's New Friend

Bruce Von Stiers

Julie is a foster kid who in a few months will age out of the system. Her foster parents aren't very nice people. Especially the foster dad, who has anger issues and smacks Julie around a little.

Somewhere in Scandinavia about the year 912, a man is being chased by a band of Vikings. He is captured, put in a coffin and onto a ship headed for the Americas. Once there he is buried alive in that coffin.

These two stories, and people, collide in the fantasy horror film Beneath Us All. The screenplay for the film was written by Bret Miller, who also penned the screenplay for another film I reviewed, Ash and Bone.

Julie finds a wounded bird and tries to help it recover. But her foster dad, Todd, takes exception to the idea and destroys the bird. That sets the tone for the cruelty that Julie must suffer at the hands of her foster parents.

Julie is in the woods and finds a medallion. Then, for some reason, she is called to dig around in the ground where the medallion was. She uncovers a box and there is something, or someone inside. It ends up being an undernourished man who she hides in a storage shed on the property.

Also mixed into the story is a social worker named Rebecca. Her caseload includes Julie and the three other children that Todd and Janelle Gibbs are fostering. Rebecca is both overworked and overwhelmed. A friend in the police force, Detective Donovan Booker, is leaving for a crisis management position and offers Rebecca a job working for him. When Rebecca has a home visit with the Gibbs, she can't help but have a bad vibe that something is wrong there.

An added plot element is that Todd Gibbs has more than a bit of a gambling problem. He owes a lot of money to a guy who runs a poker room at the back of a bar.

As the film progresses, and as Julie tries to help the man she's hidden away in the storage shed, it unfolds that he has insatiable carnivorous cravings. And apparently cannibalistic cravings as well. But the man, who Julie now knows as Frey, is not exactly a flesh-eating zombie. Nor is he strictly a vampire type creature. He seems to have some cognitive abilities that go beyond the average horror protagonist.

Frey is played by Yan Birch. He is a veteran of several horror films, including a film I reviewed some time ago, Agramon's Gate. Sean Whalen is Todd Gibbs. A familiar face in film and television, he has almost a hundred fifty screen credits. Appearing in over two hundred films, including I Spit On Your Grave: Déjà Vu, Maria Olsen plays the foster mom Janelle Gibbs.

Rebecca's cop friend, Donovan Booker, is played by Harley Wallen. He also directed the film and was one of the producers. He has a combination of one hundred twenty acting, directing, and producing credits. His film Ash and Bones has remained at the top of several lists for on-demand titles. And his limited run series, Tale of Tails, has gotten a lot of attention as well.

Kaiti Wallen is the social worker, Rebecca. She co-starred with John Savage in Betrayed and was the lead character in Tale of Tails. Amassing over twenty screen credits, Kaiti was one of the producers for this film.

Angelina Danielle Cama is Julie. She starred in Ash and Bone and either starred in or appeared in several other films by Harley Wallen. In fact, most of the films from Wallen feature a lot of the same actors and members of the production staff. It seems that the film productions have an air of family, especially in the case of Kaiti Wallen, who is Harley's wife.

Taking the family thing a bit further, the Wallen's young daughters, Emilia, and Hanna, play the two youngest children that the Gibbs are fostering.

During the film, Julie is protecting, and being a big sister type to one of the other foster kids, Stephen. This protective and sisterly caring provides a critical turning point near the end of the film. Stephen is played by Malachi Myles. He has appeared in a handful of feature and short films.

Other actors who had roles in the film, helping stitch the story together were Shelby Bradley, Michael James Alexander, and Jimmie Chiappelli. There was also Terri Partyka, Bennie Taylor, and Mara Kanyon. And there was Jessika Johnson, who has appeared in Tail of Tales and several other Wallen productions.

The more Julie becomes involved with Frey; the more things turn in a different direction. Julie turns from somewhat of a savior into a kind of entranced slave with a somewhat sensual sexual connection between her and Frey. In fact, at one point near the end of the film Julie refers to Frey as her husband.

The film has a good mix of drama, fantasy, and horror. We know that the Vikings came to America long before Columbus set foot here. So, bringing someone to America to bury them alive presents a nice fantasy element to the plot. And the drama of a foster family is well done, especially about how awful Todd and Janelle Gibbs are. The horror aspect is defined well, but with no over-the-top blood and gore. A few of the scenes had a bit of horror tongue-in-cheek, such as Julie having turned the tables on Todd, saying one of his phrases, ‘Look what you made me do.” The ending was fairly predictable, but there are very few variations of horror film conclusions, so for me, it really didn't diminish the film at all.

If you are looking for a horror film that isn't too gory but has a good drama and fantasy aspect, Beneath Us All might be worth checking out. I know that a lot of the people who have seen the film really liked it as Rotten Tomatoes has given it a hundred percent Tomatometer rating.

You can catch Beneath Us All on Vudu, Prime Video and Apple TV.

Beneath Us All has a Facebook page where you can watch a behind-the-scenes clip and view photos from it. That page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/p/Beneath-Us-All-100063640653391/

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